A quarter of a million
Twitter users have had their accounts hacked in the latest of a string
of high-profile internet security breaches.

Twitter's information security director Bob Lord said about
250,000 users' passwords had been stolen, as well as usernames, emails
and other data.

Affected users have had passwords invalidated and have been sent emails informing them.

Mr Lord said the attack "was not the work of amateurs".

He said it appeared similar to recent attacks on the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The US newspapers reported that their computer systems had been breached by China-based hackers.

'Not isolated'

Twitter has 200 million active users.

Mr Lord said in a blog post
Twitter had discovered unauthorised attempts to access data held by the
website, including one attack that was identified and stopped moments
after it was detected.

"This attack was not the work of amateurs, and we do not believe it was an isolated incident," he wrote.

Mr Lord did not say who had carried out the attack, but
added: "The attackers were extremely sophisticated, and we believe other
companies and organisations have also been recently similarly
attacked."

"For that reason we felt that it was important to publicise
this attack while we still gather information, and we are helping
government and federal law enforcement in their effort to find and
prosecute these attackers to make the internet safer for all users."

Internet security specialist Graham Cluley warned Twitter's
announcement that emails would be sent to users may prompt a spate of
spam emails "phishing" for sensitive information.

He says people should be cautious about opening emails which appear to be from Twitter.

"You have to be careful if you get hold of one of these
emails because, of course, it could equally be a phishing attack - it
could be someone pretending to be Twitter.

"So, log into the Twitter site as normal and try and log in
to your account and, if there's a problem, that's when you actually
have to try and reset your password."

Another expert in online security, Professor Alan Woodward
from the University of Surrey, warned users to be wary of messages sent
them by the hackers via Twitter itself.

"They can then send what's called direct messages," he said. "They can put malicious links in those."

"It really looks like it's coming from someone you know and
you might respond to it, you'd go to the site and all of a sudden you
find that actually you've got some malware on your machine which is then
stealing your bank details or whatever."

On Thursday the New York Times linked the attack to a story
it published alleging relatives of former Premier Wen Jiabao controlled
assets worth billions of dollars.

China's foreign ministry dismissed the New York Times' accusations as "groundless" and "totally irresponsible".